


Crevasse

by arleneeee



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Deidara collects friends like pokemon, Don't let all of this distract you from the Angst tag, Found Family, M/M, Mutual Pining, Original Character Death(s), Platonic Relationships, Redemption, Romance, Sakura wonders if she has a thing for blond-haired idiots, Sasori is still a puppet, Slow Burn, The Akatsuki actually ADORES Deidara, and deaths, and their socially inept lowkey psychotic rivals, there will be pain, with a sprinke of Action
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:14:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27820579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arleneeee/pseuds/arleneeee
Summary: Everything is going according to plan: The shinobi world is on the verge of a new dawn, the Akatsuki about to emerge from darkness, and Deidara’s feelings for his partner to be buried under layers of flesh and bones; until Deidara decides otherwise. Somewhere along the way, the search for affection and the search for truth collide.Or: In which Deidara learns how to human outside the realm of art, and Sasori learns how to human again.
Relationships: Deidara & basically everyone, Deidara/Sasori (Naruto), Haruno Sakura & Sasori
Comments: 9
Kudos: 44





	1. Criminals with Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to the amazing @hkandi for helping beta read my fic! This story wouldn't exist without you.
> 
> The story takes place during the time between the OG Naruto and Shippuden, about a year before the Akatsuki begin their Jinchuuriki hunt and derails heavily from there. I'll completely wreck canon, beware. There's a large cast of side characters in this story (because character bonding is my KINK), but they may not have an important role until further down the line, so please be patient. 
> 
> Anyway, this fic is my desperate attempt to flesh out these two seemingly unredeemable assholes and give them the love they deserve yet rarely receive. It's going to be a long and wild ride, so please sit back and enjoy (and share your thoughts if you want, I'd really appreciate it)!

When Deidara was young, Onoki used to tell him a story.

It was a tale that traveled across the Land of Earth, among whispers of old-timers and bedtime stories of parents to their puberty-stricken daughters. Their purpose: to warn against the dangers of unreciprocated feelings.

Its absurdity was so great; people would either dismiss it with creased brows or gasp in a combination of awe and grief.

It was the story of an assassin.

 _This assassin, armed with poise and full of tact_ , received a request to kill an important figure. Every day, from dawn to dusk, she would watch him from the darkness of an abandoned building, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, when he would be careless enough to turn his back against her and she could stab a kunai into his neck.

 _This assassin, armed with poise and full of tact_ , waited, and waited, and waited. Tree leaves changed colors, days turned into months. At last, she gave up the wait and charged at her target. When her blade was millimeters away from the man's flesh, her milliseconds away from escorting her victim to his long-awaited end, the assassin couldn't do it. Her hesitation spelled out her demise.

The man had plunged a sword through her chest. 

_This assassin, armed with poise and full of tact_ , died, not because of her incompetence, but because of the attachment she unknowingly formed with the man whom she watched for a long time.

* * *

It started out simple. 

A game, you could say. Like the way kids challenged themselves to walk on only the black tiles of a checkerboard floor.

Deidara, too, had this habit of setting a challenge for himself whenever he met someone new: to expose their weak spot, their deep dark secrets, and how they contradicted themselves. All those intricacies that made up a human. All those layers that entailed a fascinating form of art, the human mind itself.

That was why, when his new partner declared himself a living walking puppet, it was natural for Deidara to want to crack that shell. He had wanted to pull down the facade of a being whose greatness exceeded a mortal lifespan, an egomaniac who claimed to have freed himself of human limitations. He wanted to prove Sasori wrong. Thus, he began his little game, a game that existed only inside his head.

Days and days after their partnership had bloomed, Deidara kept tabs on his partner. Annoyed him until he opened his mouth. Befriended him with art talk. Deidara watched him with hopeful eyes, longing after the tiny light that would one day shine through the crack on his puppet shell. 

At first, it was a silly game, then a hobby, a job, a duty, a passion. Like the assassin, Deidara had abandoned his original purpose. He started to look forward to spending time with his target and wondered why, oh God, _why_ , he couldn’t look at him in the same wa—

A gentle wind pulled Deidara out of the haze. It slithered through the cracks of the window and breathed on his skin, painting his forehead with a sheen of sweat. Deidara stopped in his tracks. The drooping corners of his mouth lifted to form a straight line. His fingers, which had been grating his head with a force strong enough to cause tears, curled back into his palms.

Deidara reached into his pocket, fished out a handful of hair ties, and twirled them around his hair, styling a low ponytail. Non-public activities required minimal grooming. 

From the cycle of pacing back and forth he had been submerged in for who-knew-how-long, Deidara emerged. His steps broke free from the pattern, making a swift turn towards the room's exit. When Deidara cast a glance at his hand, the veins on his wrist quivered and squirmed. They jabbed at the under-layer of his skin like a pack of blue and green worms craving escape. His muscles jerked. The ashy taste of this morning's explosion danced on his tongue.

Deidara blinked. Everything was normal again.

Today's mission left him with a lot of excess energy.

It was the usual mass-scale, destructive, homicidal, feel-good kind of mission. In other words, a guaranteed success. If only that success didn't double as a definite disappointment. Deidara was restless, and on restless nights like this, thoughts of _him_ always crept in.

Deidara reached for the door's handle. He had decided to go out, blow up whatever blocking his way, and hope that the sight of his art would put his mind at peace.

"Ahh!"

A scream surfaced the moment he opened the door. It was breathy and rough—a man's voice. Deidara reached for the explosive clay in his pouch. His mouth moved on its own, stretching sideways to reveal a smile.

 _At this point, it_ _doesn't matter. An intruder, a hired assassin, the Tsuchikage, or Uchiha-fucking-Itachi._ A good fight would definitely calm his bursting veins and lay the turbulent windstorm that was his thoughts to rest.

Before Deidara whipped out a bomb, the door next to his room sprang open, and with it, an alert Kakuzu rushed out. Deep lines etched on his forehead, adding a hint of indignation onto his face, the face of a man who defied time. 

"What? What's wrong? A thief?" Kakuzu said. He was in the same position as Deidara, weapon in hand and ready for combat.

"We _are_ the fucking thieves, smartass!" The voice groaned. "We stole this goddamn house!"

A box of sweets came flying through the air and hit Kakuzu's face. From the corner of Deidara's eyes, a familiar bob of silver hair appeared.

Deidara tilted his head in confusion. "Hidan? What are you doing?" 

The assumed intruder was a Hidan in his natural habitat: vulgar, shirtless, and a little drunk. He was crouching in front of the fridge, whose frosty air sprinkled fresh dew across his skin. Hidan slapped the fridge door closed and stood up, a sake bottle and several packs of snacks under his arms. 

"Finding something to eat, _genius_."

Deidara grudgingly removed himself from his clay. “ _Right_. Why the hell did you screa—”

“Whatever. Don't stay up too late,” Kakuzu interrupted as he stretched his arms. “We have a target to go after tomorrow, at dawn.”

“ _A thief, really?”_ Hidan rolled his eyes. “We're in the _Akatsuki_. We steal shit and ice people for money. And you’re here worrying about a thief?”

"Hey, being the Akatsuki's treasurer is real pressure.” Deidara grinned at Kakuzu. “Sometimes the stress makes you a little paranoid, yeah?”

“Speak for yourself,” Hidan smirked. “I saw you reaching your little clay purse. You were pretty adamant about killing me too.”

“Adamant? I didn't know your vocabulary's grown that extensive.”

“You know what's more extensive? Your fucking _guts_ when I rip them out of your stomach.”

“Shut up, both of you.” Kakuzu had this annoying habit of chiming in at the most inconvenient times. “You brats don't know how to be grateful. I'm paying for your food and keeping you alive.”

“Listen, I don't give a fuck,” Hidan said as he strolled towards the dining table, tossed away the table-cloth to project authority, and laid down his food. “Money, money, money. Who cares about your fucking side missions?”

“I don't give a damn about your rituals either.” 

Deidara reveled in watching chaos unfold. Kakuzu's expression darkened. The kunai in his hand took off and landed on Hidan's neck with precision, drawing blood. Hidan cussed and held a hand over his wound.

Wasting no time, Kakuzu disappeared into his room and slammed the door shut. Deidara had taken a little too much interest; he was smiling all the way through the Zombie Duo’s little scuffle. They bickered a lot, sure. Killed each other a lot, sure. But when teamed up, they proved themselves a significant threat. Compared to the Artist Duo, Deidara and Sasori, their pair work was far superior. Explosions and puppets never worked well.

"Wow, Kakuzu’s ruthless," Deidara said.

Hidan rubbed his temples. "Fuck off. You’re all fucking mental."

"I’m sure you're the first thing that pops up when people hear the word mental." Deidara wasn’t going to let that embarrassing incident slide just yet, but sometimes the evilest of men had a change of heart, and that change of heart occurred to Deidara the moment he saw Hidan sulkily shoved a potato chip into his mouth. “I bet Kakuzu’s beating himself up over it in that room.”

“Over what?” said Hidan.

“Making a fuss over a thief, of course.”

“Oh.”

“That was embarrassing, yeah?”

“I don’t need your pity words.” Hidan sent him a glare. “I know Kakuzu. That wrinkly sack tries so hard to put up a cool image, I’ve-lived-longer-than-your-grandma, I’ve-fought-the-first-Hokage type of shit. He’s having a mental breakdown right now if you ask me.”

“Tell me that ain’t Sasori. Right now.”

“Oh, tell me that ain’t everyone in this goddamn organization.”

When Deidara thought about it, he and Hidan had a lot in common. They were among the youngest members and the latest recruits, both stuck with an annoying older partner. Hidan’s devoutness and brash attitude smothered every hint of respect Deidara might have had for a senior, but that wasn't a bad thing. Rather, it sparked a sense of equality. 

A sense of camaraderie.

"You should be thankful I got you a nice place to stay the night," Hidan said after a long rant about Kakuzu.

"It’s a nice change of scenery," Deidara replied, recalling the softness of the mattress spreading under him and the lukewarm, bubbling water enveloping him as he dipped into the inn's bathtub. "Almost a luxury."

“If you and Sasori stop wasting every penny on clay and dolls." Hidan blew out an exasperated sigh. “guess what? You can afford this every night.”

“I’m not lucky enough to be partnered with a master of finance, and a hella rich bastard at that.”

“If you were me, you’d be fucking dead.”

The dim, yellow light of the hallway spilled over Deidara as he stepped into the kitchen. He leaned against a counter, facing Hidan. “Why did you drag us—” Deidara scoffed. “—invited us here?”

“Because seeing you two cooped up in that dirty cave made my eyes bleed,” Hidan said, opening another bag of chips. “And always spending time with that stingy old fuck makes me want to die.”

Deidara's fingers idly traced the edge of the kitchen counter. "You don't understand, yeah. If an artist lives in luxury all the time, his creativity will dampen."

"All artists are pathetic, dirt-poor fuckers then?” Hidan's nose scrunched up. “Not beyond my expectation.”

The disgust on his face evaporated as he smiled, putting his hands behind his head. The cut on his neck had healed itself.

Deidara stared at the man before him, then at the bloodstain on the wall behind his back. This morning, after finishing their mission, Deidara and Sasori had wandered to Kusagakure, the village hidden in grass. It was a small and sparsely populated village to the south of Iwagakure, coiling out of sight among soaring bamboo forests. They were settling for the night in a cave until noticed by a pair of distinctive purple eyes. 

Hidan had hauled Deidara and Sasori to his and Kakuzu's accommodation: an isolated inn on the village’s border with death permeating every corner. Even now, it was full in presence.

It splattered on the floor and walls in red strokes. It bled out from the bathroom mirrors and leaked from running taps and crawled on onions on cutting boards, in the middle of being chopped. Life was here, life was vivid, but life was stopped, and the carriers of life could no longer be seen.

"Where did you put the bodies?" Deidara asked.

"Beats me." Hidan shrugged. "Kakuzu said he'll take care of them. Don't tell me you're scared."

"I'm more scared of what you did to them."

"Huh. You're picking up on Sasori's sarcasm."

"I'm sure Kakuzu has rubbed off on you in some way," Deidara said, scanning the room. "Is it just me or you've become smarter?"

"No more of this luxury for you, _princess_." Hidan set his jaw. " The next place you’re putting your back on is Jashin’s symbol. On this floor. Drawn with your blood.”

Deidara pretended to scream in horror. Hidan didn't bring his scythe with him, so his attacks consisted of relentless verbal abuse and flying bags of chips. Deidara waited, patiently so, as Hidan went through every lexical variant of male and female reproductive organs known to man. 

He received Hidan's serves of chips packages varyingly, with his hands, his feet, his chest and his head, before hurling them back in his opponent's direction. They went back and forth a few rounds until the bags ripped apart, causing a downpour of chips to cascade on the two Akatsuki-nin. Hidan and Deidara exchanged looks. Then they burst out laughing.

"There goes my fucking meal." Hidan caught a chip on his tongue and swallowed it with a grin. "Well, I still have some liquor left. Wanna join? I'll show you the ways of Jashin."

Knowing too well that would result in his death, Deidara excused himself and headed out the door. It was bright enough to navigate without a light source. The wooden floor creaked as he skipped down the stairs leading to the inn's front porch. Painted golden by the moonlight, the bamboo trees stood straight and tall, casting shadows on the inn's walls. Deidara closed his eyes and let his legs take him wherever they wished. 

They took him to Sasori.

"Danna?" Deidara called out. In the murky darkness, he could barely make out the shape of Sasori, only the redness of his hair and the black silhouette of his cloak. He was walking along the road leading into the forest. "Hey, wait for me!" 

The distance didn't enable Deidara to see Sasori's face, only catching him turning around for a moment to stare at him. Still, Deidara was sure he was wearing an expression of shock turned into hostility turned into utter despair when he picked up his pace. Sasori was running. Deidara charged at breakneck speed.

A late-night run was more energizing than he thought. Deidara sprinted through the forest after his partner, the air suffocating him moments ago now refreshing as it brushed through his hair, the pounding of his shoes against the ground matching his heartbeat. It was a regular game of tag at first, but things escalated quickly. Sasori adhered his chakra strings on the trees to swing himself through long distances. Deidara fell behind, knowing he needed to use something other than mere strength, or else he would never catch up.

"You and your damn strings. We never agree to this!" Deidara shouted. 

"We never disagree with it either." Sasori's voice was distant, muffled by the wind. 

Deidara traced a few steps back to gather momentum. Three, four, five, then six big steps. He rushed forward and jumped. His body plunged into the depth of the forest, arms dangling behind his back. 

In mid-air, Deidara’s feet found the trunk of a bamboo tree. He channeled chakra down to his feet and lowered himself, his weight making the tree bent down halfway. When he dispersed his chakra back to where they belonged, all over his body, the tree sprung upright and heaved him forward.

Stepping on trees. Chakra down towards feet. Releasing. Repeat. Deidara sailed over the foliage by recycling the same moves. It was flawless to a fault. 

Deidara had to remind himself that besides his callousness, Sasori was also a crafty bastard. He had turned the entire forest into his playground. Chakra strings hung from the trees, woven together in a spinning web, eager to welcome Deidara into their spirals of glinting silk.

It would be too slow to maneuver his way between them, so Deidara set off small clay spiders to force his way through. 

"Katsu! Katsu! Katsu!" His voice rang at the top of his lungs.

This little session with Sasori made adrenaline pump in Deidara's veins more than this morning's mission ever could. His every muscle twitched with anticipation. He was smiling.

At some point during the game, Deidara didn't care about catching Sasori, and it seemed like his partner, too, had forgotten his purpose. The melody of the forest and the echo of their footsteps coalesced into music ringing in Deidara's ears. He soared across the sky, leapt through the trees, breathed in the fresh air, and felt the wind on his skin, rejoicing in the blasting sounds of his creations. 

Having a crush was weird. Deidara could spend silly moments like this with Sasori and think it was enough, it was more than he ever needed; then a moment later, he found himself wishing for more.

The gap between the duo shortened with every leap Deidara made. By the time he ran out of clay, it was reduced to the length of an arm. Deidara extended his arm to grab Sasori by his cloak, but Sasori turned around in a swift movement. Surprised, Deidara staggered back, struggling to regain balance.

 _It's okay. There should be a tree below for me to land on._ That was what he thought, but his mind raced when he felt nothing under his feet. 

Nothing but a fine thread of chakra. 

"No—" The wind interrupted his cry, rushing into his throat. His mouth was agape as he fell.

In a frantic attempt to catch Sasori, Deidara had tripped over a chakra string. It touched the top of his foot and sent him backward. There was no clay left for him to make something, and even if his hands managed to grab a trunk, the smooth surface of it wouldn't provide any friction to hold him back, any help but breaking his nails. The world around grew dim. A fall from such a height would crush half of his bones, to say the least. 

Deidara shut his eyes and braced for months of hospitalization and Kakuzu fretting over the bills.

"Deidara!" 

When Deidara opened his eyes, he was still suspended in mid-air; there were strings attached to his arms and legs. The source of those strings: Sasori's fingers. From above him, Sasori hopped between the trees and landed on the ground, making no sounds. After an array of twists and turns of his fingers, Deidara found himself standing on the ground with his bones intact, his body unharmed. 

The chakra strings unraveled around his limbs and vanished. 

"That fall… won't kill me, you know." Deidara scratched the nape of his neck.

"But it'll stop you from doing missions for quite a while." Sasori sighed. "Why did you even come here?"

"I saw you and thought you needed company."

"I don't like your company," Sasori said. "Spending time with you on missions was irritating enough."

"Ouch," Deidara clutched the fabric of his own shirt dramatically. "But hey, we should do this again sometime. We're both long-range fighters, so some endurance training will come in handy when we get cornered in battles, yeah?"

"I'm a puppet. I don't have stamina."

"Right. Now I feel stupid."

Sasori avoided his gaze. "I do need to find new material and make equipment to make myself more durable, though."

“If you ever need someone to test your durability, I’m always here.”

“Anything, anything but your explosions.”

Deidara responded with a slight scowl. He scrutinized the area, eyes going wide as the path leading into the forest was now buried behind rows of bamboo trees. Treetops that punctured the clouds stared down at him and Sasori, belittling the trespassers who tainted their beauty. 

Stretching before them was the heart of the forest—a river. The stream flowed onward, carrying fragments of the broken moon and the greens of tree leaves reflected in its body. The smell of damp soil pervaded the place. Deidara's palms grew sweaty; the scenery was almost… romantic.

"Do you want to sit down for a bit?" he said.

Sasori gave a silent nod. He took a seat by the river, and Deidara followed, making sure not to sit too close. They must have been deep into the night since the air had turned somewhat crisp. The thrill of competing with Sasori had blinded all Deidara's senses, and it was only until now, when he was inert, that fatigue caught up with Deidara, seeping into his bones and manifesting itself in waves of shudders.

"Here."

Deidara turned to the source of the voice. Sasori wasn't looking at him, but he was reaching out to offer his Akatsuki cloak. Deidara raised an eyebrow. How Sasori handled personal hygiene as a human puppet was a mystery to him—a mystery he didn’t want to solve, that was.

"Thanks?" After a few blinks, Deidara grabbed the item from Sasori. He fumbled with it, then put it over his shoulders. 

Sasori's cloak smelled nothing like he imagined, exuding musky oud and notes of amber rather than a soggy stench of wet wood. It offered little comfort against the cold, yet Deidara's face turned warm. He pressed his lips together, suppressing a smile that threatened to break out.

"You are strangely quiet these days. Not that I'm complaining." 

Sasori's sudden initiation crushed his attempt to stay calm to pieces. Deidara breathed out a laugh. He dipped a hand into the river. Like a whirlwind of sand sweeping through Sunagakure in its seasonal sandstorm, the cold water whisked away clutters of emotions swirling inside his head.

Deidara snatched a glance at Sasori's face, which was reflected in the water below. He always looked the most peaceful when they were outside, enjoying nature.

"I heard forests and rivers are very important to the villagers here," Deidara said.

Sasori's voice was silky-smooth. "People say these forests are alive, having a soul of their own. They even make offerings every year or so."

"They would be fucking pissed at us then," Deidara commented. "You know a lot, huh? Is it a spy?"

Sasori made a low, guttural sound to signify a yes. "I have spies all over the continents."

“Of course.”

Conversations between Deidara and Sasori flowed in a lyrical cadence, their words notes in a symphony. It started slow, even dull, dying down into a stretch of silence, then reaching the climax in a high and blaring note.

Today, Deidara delivered that note.

"This is weird to ask, but do you think criminals like us deserve happiness?" 

"There must be something wrong with you today." 

"I have feelings, you know. Being a criminal doesn't equal being heartless."

Sasori frowned. "No, not that. Since when did you consider yourself a criminal?"

"I—"

"Criminal is a social term," Sasori added, his voice gaining more depth. "It's a title the good guys gave us."

"In that sense, you can say that laws are made up too."

“Well, yes,” Sasori replied. “You and I, we are not bound by the laws, the rules, the restraints society forced on its people. We do whatever the hell we want. 

"Call yourself one, but I'm not a criminal. I don't want the word some goody-two-shoes made up to define me. I choose what I want to be called."

Deidara bit his lower lip. "You have a point."

"Hey," Sasori called out, but his words were not in the usual grumble when they argued. The way he spoke was soft and peaceful, almost reassuring; it made heat rise in Deidara's chest. "Why did you become a missing-nin?"

"I just want people to appreciate my art." Deidara crossed his arms. "How many times do I have to repeat that?"

"Well, did people in Iwa not respect your art?"

"I wish that's the case," Deidara said. "They straight-up despised it. Made fun of it. I was in the Explosion Corps, but they never let me use my explosions freely. I never felt like a part of that village."

"Can you blame them though?"

" _Danna._ "

Sasori chuckled. Deidara saw that light again, shining through the crack. "To be honest, I never liked being called Akasuna. Don't let those meaningless terms get into your head. Once you regard yourself as the bad guy, you're done." 

"Yeah, who cares if you're legal or not?" Deidara lit up. "I'm just an artist!"

"Art is enough, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Deidara said.

His gaze wandered downstream, following the diagonal line of the river growing thinner and thinner in the distance. At the end of its treacherous journey, the river was fated to meet the ocean. Deidara could thrust his hands into the water over and over again, trying to disrupt the flow; still, it would find a way to trickle between his fingers and persevere onward. 

How unchanging time was. There were lines once crossed, you’d better never look back and keep moving on.

Deidara splashed water onto his face, rendering the voice in his head silent. "Art is the thing I live and die for. That's why I'm here. But I've been thinking, you know, maybe I can add something else into the formula. Something like… companionship?"

Deidara cringed.

"Having someone to discuss art with is fine," replied Sasori. "But I would like someone with more taste."

“Turn away from the truth as much as you want. Art is an explosion.” Deidara reached towards the sky, his blank canvas, and scrawled indistinguishable shapes between the stars with his fingertip. Then he imagined how they burned and warped and wilted, ablaze in a glorious yet fleeting moment before succumbing to the tearing force of a formidable BANG!

“One day, you’ll see,” Deidara added, his voice tinged with delight. “And they’ll see too. I’ll become one with my art.”

"You’re going to blow yourself up?"

"Oh, it won't be like any other explosion," Deidara said. "I will kiss goodbye to this world in the most epic way humanity has ever seen."

Sasori scoffed. "Ridiculous."

"When that time comes, will you be there?"

There was a long pause before Sasori opened his mouth. "I doubt you can survive that long, but sure, how can I miss it? I look forward to it very much."

Deidara gathered his legs in front of his chest. "But what will you do? Do you ever consider death?" 

"Not at all," Sasori said. "I will live on forever with my creations. When it’s due that my body is no longer in condition, I'll replace it with another vessel."

"In that case, why not make changes to your appearance?" Deidara tilted his head. "You can do whatever you want with your looks as a puppet, right? Why not a new face, or try adding some inches to that 15-year-old body of yours?"

“Please tell me you’re referring to my height. Exclusively.” 

“Of course—wait, what?” said Deidara, mouth half-open. “Did you—just—why? God, _why are you being like this?_ ” 

Hilarity raised the volume of Deidara’s voice, and by the end of his sentence, his confused stammers had erupted into hearty laughter. He slapped Sasori’s shoulder. Sasori shrank from the touch, but his breaths told Deidara he was equally amused. That was because Sasori didn’t breathe; air came out of his mouth as a grunt, a sigh, or a laugh. In this situation, it was safe to assume the last option was right.

Yet happiness always comes with a price. As the hysteria ebbed into silence, Deidara looked down and felt his stomach clenching. He tried to hold on to something, to stop himself from drowning in a surge of paradoxical feelings—of peace and longing, of happiness and emptiness, of being content and being greedy.

No one had explained to him how caring for someone could be this aggravating. How one could doubt and fear in the time for celebration. Deidara was exhausted, and bored, really _fucking_ bored. So, he thought, _why not end everything here?_ The setting and timing were perfect for a confession. If he got these emotions out somehow, he could maybe move on from this stupid game. He could slaughter the butterflies and continue a life of pleasure, art and malice. 

Deidara gulped. He leaned closer to Sasori.

_Look him in the eyes, Deidara. You can do this._

Sasori looked as mesmerizing as always. Watching him brought back memories Deidara wanted to forget, he fooled himself to forget. 

The best perk of being a puppet was that you didn't need sleep. On nights without assigned missions like this, Sasori usually went out for a walk, but sometimes he would begrudgingly let Deidara tag along, and the moon would lend a glow to his mousy red hair, some warmth to his eyes, and some humanity to his non-human face. His gaze would be directed heavenward, perhaps reminiscing, perhaps envisioning, but never at present. Never at Deidara. 

Sasori lived in his own world. He was near, but never truly near. His coat turned cold as it hung from Deidara's shoulders. Deidara took it off and handed it over. 

"Sorry for interfering with your walk. I'm sleepy, so I'll head back now."

Sasori retrieved his cloak with slight hesitation. "You don't remember the way back."

"I'll try."

"Stop acting so sullen." Sasori's expression softened. "I was joking, okay? I don't mind spending time with you once in a while."

Damn it. _Damn it._

A genuine smile was tugged at the corners of his lips. The stars scattered across the black sky above Deidara's head, sparkling like the embers of a dying fire. Those mystical planets, whose existence was billions of miles out of human reach—they couldn't outshine that smile.

"Danna," he said.

"Yes?"

"Me too. I like spending time with you too."


	2. Japanese Has Three Alphabets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one thing I want to make clear before you read. The character that appears in this chapter, Kanyu, is actually a half-OC character who comes from the novel Akatsuki Hiden. I use her name, her backstory, and the story of her meeting Deidara and Sasori, but her personality is 100% my interpretation. 
> 
> If you want to know more about her, you can check out the novel, but even if you don't, you'll still be able to understand the story just well. You only need to know that she's a potter from a village called Ceramic Village and her dream is to revive an ancient form of pottery called Hanasaki. She is also acquaintances with Deidara and Sasori as the two of them help her destroy the village that holds her back.
> 
> The reason I chose Kanyu over a pre-existing canon character is that no one in canon can replace her role, and she fits perfectly as Deidara and Sasori's friends. Likewise, this fic will include a lot of other OCs so I hope you're fine with it.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy this long and light-hearted chapter before we jump into some action!

Kanyu was, arguably, the only person Deidara considered a friend.

Labels carried little weight when you led a life of a missing-nin, a life where people faded in and faded out like a firefly’s flickering existence. There were always the odds. Making non-Akatsuki acquaintance meant taking chances, treading shallow water, being constantly restless, constantly on the lookout for any indications of a spy. They mustn’t gamble their lives upon such risks—Sasori had hammered the fact into Deidara’s mind lots of times. Deidara had compromised. After all, Iwa must have put a bounty on his head, and those Kiri hunter-nin lurked in the shadows.

Still, in certain instances, when the sun turned blood-red and wisps of clouds eclipsed the break of day, when the air simmered and the trees basked in the residual heat of his creations, Deidara had longed for someone to share the glory. A like-minded artist, someone other than Sasori with his shitty taste. Someone other than a shinobi, really, outside of all the battles and bloodlust and ninja shenanigans.

The day she came, the walls of Deidara’s daydream were torn. She ripped through the confinement of his mind and stepped into his life two years ago, in one of his and Sasori’s trips to the Ceramic Village. Located near a former stream bed, the village had an abundant clay supply Deidara often stole from. There they came across _her_ —a potter with a passionate heart, an intelligent mind, and skillful hands. She had the right portion of craziness to make her interesting and a perfect dose of ignorance to guarantee her _harmless._

“Remind me why you’re here?” Deidara pressed the map against the nape of the clay bird’s neck. “I thought you hated my company.”

“I want to experiment with new material. The clay there can be useful,” Sasori said in Hiruko’s gravelly voice.

“Some qualities of Hanasaki clay are great for puppets, yeah? Fire resistance, electrical resistance.” Deidara exerted more pressure in his grip to secure the map in place, sheltering it from the yanks of the wind. Then, hearing no response from Sasori, he added: “Ironic, isn’t it? Your puppets and my explosions, made from the same material.”

“Trees.”

“Look, I know you take pride in your repertoire of one-word replies,” Deidara clicked his tongue. “But you’re making no damn sense.”

There was a shuffling sound behind Deidara’s back. Then it erupted into a commotion of snapping joints and clacking metal like the moans of a malfunctioned machine. Deidara tensed up, preparing himself for a deadly strike from Hiruko, but it never came.

They lapsed into silence.

“Toilet paper and fine art paper are both made from trees. One makes canvases for drawings, paintings, vessels of significant historical documents and records that transcend time and space,” Sasori said matter-of-factly. “One you use to wipe your ass.”

Deidara snorted. “That’s a good one.”

“I know.”

Wiping a smile off his lips, Deidara turned back to the work at hand: navigating _h_ _er_ location. His gaze darted from place to place, tracing the lines that enclosed the multi-colored shapes of sprawling continents. The wind had loosened its grip on his map. Like a girl in her lover’s presence, she mellowed as hints of sunset kissed the horizon.

Deidara had miscalculated. With the great distance bridging Kusagakure and their destination, it would take at least three days, including night breaks, to arrive.

“I know I can’t trust you with directions,” Sasori grunted as the clay bird skimmed along a soft curve. “Turn around. The Ceramic Village’s behind us.”

“We destroyed it, remember?”

“Oh.”

“Scatterbrain,” Deidara said, immediately following his insult with more information to deflect Sasori’s imminent remark. “Anyway, I ran into Kanyu the other day. Girl’s moved to somewhere in Lightning, apparently—Valley of Lies, yeah, something like that.”

“You meet up with her often,” Sasori commented.

“The clay there is out of this world,” Deidara shrugged. “I need more of that goodness. Visiting Kanyu is just a by-product.”

“But you two seem close,” Sasori insisted. “Remember the first time we stayed over at her place? You were talking to her in your boxers.”

“Shit, you saw that?”

“I _heard_ that. You were loud.”

“It’s not my fault I was in the mood for some late-night art discussion,” Deidara said as he folded the map into a neat square and slid it into his cloak’s pocket, turning around to face Sasori. “And I happen to like sleeping in my boxers.”

Hiruko’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t be surprised if your relationship turns into, let’s say, something else.”

“No. We’re not like that.” Deidara leveled a dead stare.

Then he spent three days explaining to Sasori why there was no way, in any alternate timeline or universe, he and Kanyu could be a couple, presenting every piece of evidence at his disposal (excluding the fact that Deidara had a thing for Sasori, of course). During that time span, one thought kept appearing in Deidara’s mind.

His partner was so, so _painfully_ oblivious.

* * *

By the time Deidara finished proving to Sasori that he and Kanyu would still not end up together in a timeline where they were the last two dinosaurs to survive the meteor crash, the Land of Lightning had welcomed them into her embrace with chilly coastal air and a cloudless blue sky.

“Reproduction is hard-wired in all living organisms,” Sasori said, irritation lending his voice extra roughness. “How can a man and a woman not get together when it’s the fucking end of the world and they’re the only ones left?”

Deidara rubbed his eyes, which were puffy due to nights of sleeplessness. “Because I like guys.”

Sasori went dead silent.

As Deidara and Sasori made a detour to avoid Kumogakure, the Valley of Lies unfurled between ranges of mountains. It was a small area, cramped between mountain walls and dotted by kilns with fire blaring in their mouths. Deidara hopped down from the clay bird as soon as it landed. The muddy ground swallowed the soles of his sandals, making him stumble, but he regained his balance in time.

Deidara took a few seconds to soak in the ambiance. The sight of ceramic and kilns stirred up distant memories from his pre-enlightenment days, while echoes of roaring fire and popping explosions embellished those humdrum parts of his life with charming finishing touches. Kanyu was among the chaos, like she had always been. She was crouching in front of an open kiln, long brown hair tied into a messy ponytail draping over her shoulder. Deidara, the self-proclaimed stealth master, crept towards her.

“Need some help with that?” Deidara stood behind Kanyu, grinning.

“Nice try, Deidara,” Kanyu replied without turning around. “And Sasori. Hey, long time.”

Surprise swept over Deidara’s face when he turned aside and found an out-of-Hiruko Sasori next to Kanyu. He amused himself with a new realization: they trusted Kanyu enough to confide their identities in her, partly because she was their friend, mostly because she didn’t give a fuck.

“Why do I hear explosions?” It was a very Sasori kind of way to communicate by skipping small talk and delving straight into the discussion. “Are you trying to mess with me or blow up your works?”

“Both?” Kanyu smiled.

She said nothing more, letting the sight before them be her answer. It was a very Deidara kind of way to invade people’s personal space by squeezing himself between Sasori and Kanyu instead of taking the place on Kanyu’s unoccupied left. Together, the three of them peered into the firing chamber.

Five white ceramic vases were stacked in the kiln, a traditional model with a brick hover, a fueling area stockpiled with burning logs, and a chimney stack poking out from the back, balls of smoke rolling out from its opening. The crisp snip-snap-whoosh of the fire crackled and snapped. It breathed life into the infantile clayware, breathed art into their plain figures. The vases were being fired at an alarming rate. Knowing the miracle that would come next, Deidara couldn’t help but reach out.

Sasori extended his arm before Deidara’s chest, pushing him backward.

“It won’t hurt you, I swear.” Kanyu broke into laughter. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat, Sasori.”

Cracking sounds of ceramic brought Kanyu’s laugh to a halt. The flame swirled and swirled in a dizziness-inducing pace, faster and faster until Deidara’s eyes failed to follow. Then magic happened: small explosions flared off and rattled the kiln.

“It’s a special firing technique using explosions,” Kanyu explained to Sasori. “You fire clay very fast, limit the fuel and thus limit the severity of the explosions, and ta-dah—nice cracks patterns. I’ve done my fair share of experiments, and this turned out to be the best way to make Hanasaki-style pottery.”

“Do you realize how risky that is? One mistake and you’d get burnt,” Sasori said, growing visibly disgusted. “Or dead, if that’s what you prefer.”

Kanyu turned up to look at Deidara, who cracked a knowing smile and muttered “I know” before jumping to her defense. “Don’t be so rude. We were the ones who helped her discover the secret to her art.”

“I didn’t think that secret was going to be explosions.”

“Life is full of the unexpected,” Deidara said as he leaned against the kiln’s wall. “You never thought of helping someone by burning down their village, yeah? But here we are.”

“He’s right. I’m really thankful for that,” Kanyu replied, and Sasori’s expression became less clouded at this verbalization of gratitude.

“I couldn’t stand seeing an artist not reaching her full potential because of her village.” Deidara made a valiant effort to hide his clenching fists under his arms. “A village that values profit over art doesn’t deserve to live anyway.”

A silent nod was shared between the Artist Trio.

It was a crazy coincidence, the three of them ever crossing paths. Three crazed artists united in the same place, existing in the same age. Three exiles, three disdained geniuses, three different views that were ahead of their time. Three once prisoners of a broken system, now free. Deidara ran a finger across his headband, feeling the depth of the slash that split Iwa’s insignia in half.

His gaze flicked over Sasori as a habit and lingered long enough for the latter to notice. An awkward atmosphere bubbled up around them.

“So, Kanyu, do you want to explain to Sasori here why you moved?” Deidara asked, then broke the eye contact.

“I was bored with living on my own, plus the clay supply in Ceramic has gone short,” Kanyu said. “So I wandered around and found this place. It has seclusion, nice weather, perfect mud, flowers… and a handsome man whom I’m now married to.”

Sasori threw his head back. “You’re married?”

Deidara inspected inside the firing chamber for traces left by the explosions. “There are flowers?”

Kanyu made a face. “Talk about priorities. Yes. Both what you’re looking for are over there.”

As she spoke, she signaled to a low cliff at the far side of the valley, where a flower field rested. Deidara could see it well thanks to the scope he donned on his left eye, down to every drop of morning dew, every shudder of white curling petals. He squinted against the whiteness; even the clay used in Kanyu’s works paled when met with such ghastly pallor. Kanyu’s husband was a dark silhouette in the field, drowning amid those splattering white waves. If it hadn’t been for his trained eyes, Deidara would have thought he had fallen into a genjutsu. The last time he did, he was forced into joining an evil organization, was so spellbound he thought Itachi was art. Not so great.

Deidara spent what felt like minutes exchanging pleasantries with Kanyu’s husband, Kiiro, after Kanyu called him over. The man looked too simple for an artist’s life partner, but he balanced Kanyu’s personality well. Sasori stayed silent, observing them with evident annoyance that warped into animosity as each second passed. Deidara noticed this and brought the conversation to an abrupt end.

“Kanyu, I need some of your clay to experiment with my puppets,” Sasori said after Kiiro had again disappeared into the field.

“I’m no stranger to your partner taking my clay without paying,” sighed Kanyu. “Take as much as you want. It’s stored in my workshop next to the cliff.”

Sasori looked happy as he left.

“I see he’s as bossy as ever.” Kanyu regarded Deidara with a disapproving look. She was now moving between the kilns to add fuel. “You’re going in there?”

“Nah, I’ll stay here and help you.”

To Deidara, making pottery was child’s play. He loaded Kanyu’s left-over batches of sculptures into firing while she double-checked the amount of fuel in each kiln to make sure no accidents take place. Her close monitoring spoiled every of Deidara’s attempts to sneak in more firewood. Deidara was disappointed to a great degree.

When there was nothing left to do, they huddled together in front of a humming kiln and watched. The fire blew warm air onto Deidara’s face. Mini-explosions reverberated in his ears. The smell of burning clay was so rich it turned liquid, thick droplets of earthiness. Deidara held his tongue out to taste, then swallow the warmth that traveled across his body.

It was comfortable, too comfortable—the kind of comfort that made you want to pour your heart out.

“Actually, I didn’t come here to visit you only,” Deidara blurted out. “I want to… ask for some advice.”

“Knowing you, either you want advice on how to murder Sasori or get into his pants.” Kanyu ran a skeptical eye over Deidara’s expression. “I won’t be surprised if it’s both.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“So obvious only a thirty-something virgin like Sasori wouldn’t get it,” Kanyu shook her head. “You didn’t argue much today. Are you guys fighting or something?”

Deidara scratched the back of his neck. “It’s complicated.”

“Just tell him.”

“It’s not that easy.”

Kanyu looked uninterested. “Your solution? Ignore your feelings until they go away?”

“If I knew the solution, I wouldn’t have to ask you, dumbass,” Deidara flicked Kanyu’s forehead. “Ignoring, yeah, I tried, for three damn years. It didn’t work.”

“Three years? That’s some serious dedication,” Kanyu teased, then quickly sobered up as Deidara’s expression gravitated towards anger and his arm gravitated towards his clay pouch. “Okay, _okay_ , I think I know why it didn’t work. Feelings don’t go away unless you have closure.”

“I have closure,” Deidara said. “He doesn’t care about me, not in that way.”

“But a part of you still hopes he does, doesn’t it?” Kanyu stared through him. “If not, you wouldn’t be here today, telling me this damn sob story about you and your crush as an S-rank missing-nin.” She heaved a sigh. “That little tiny part, that optimistic voice, you have to obliterate it, crush it into nothing, build a wall at the end of the tunnel, because the heart is stubborn, Deidara. It clings onto the very last glimmer of hope.”

Kanyu’s words spoke to Deidara, to a part of him that was left in a corner and marred with a decade’s worth layer of dust. Art, explosions, the Akatsuki, the Bijuu, and the killings—they crisscrossed and mutated and overlapped and muddled everything else. But Kanyu—she cleared away the fog. And on the other side of the fog was an alien realm.

For the first time in his life, Deidara found himself in a dilemma that couldn’t be resolved with his fists, a problem whose solution didn’t include anything between the lines of shinobi, responsibilities, more strength, more power… Because fighting would not stop these feelings.

Hearing it from a non-shinobi made it all the clearer. Kanyu’s advice brought home how clueless killing machines like him were when it came to mundane matters like emotions and love. Deidara sat dumbfounded, feeling strangely naked, feeling like a fish out of water, wanting to run. 

“What if I fail?” he said, after a long pause.

“What if you fail?” Kanyu repeated. “Deidara, look.”

All the logs had melted along with the heat of the day. Deidara watched as Kanyu pulled out a finished vase from the kiln before them with a pair of tongs. She held it between them, then loosened the tongs’ grip and let the vase fall. A whiff of wind materialized from her open palm and spun the vase in mid-air.

“Kiiro taught me how to use Wind Release,” Kanyu said, winking. “My jutsu is pathetic, I know, but it suffices.”

Seeing Kanyu’s works in motion unmasked their latent beauty. As the vase turned, the series of cracks on its body coalesced to form a continuous stream of blooming and withering flowers. It was not simply a pattern but a motion picture, a flower’s life cycle unfolding before his eyes.

“My art, Hanasaki, is an art born from brokenness,” Kanyu said. “Signs of breakage and damage make it more beautiful. Stronger. Mature.”

“You’ve been telling me that for the past two years.”

“I’ve always looked at the clean, spotless pottery as babies. They are clean, innocent, sure, but they lack the hardship that trains them into more durable works.”

After laying the vase down, Kanyu grabbed Deidara’s wrist and positioned his arm on her lap. Deidara’s confusion nearly blew up into panic when she proceeded to slide up his sleeve and feel around on his forearm.

“As I thought, someone who plays with explosions that much can’t possibly be scar-free.” Kanyu’s fingers stopped at a reddish burn mark in the crook of Deidara’s elbow. “But this is just the outer layer, you know? For a Hanasaki product to be perfect, it has to build up heat resistance from within.”

“What are you getting at?”

Kanyu pinched Deidara’s arm in frustration. “If I just want the cracks, I could grab a knife and carve them myself. What I want is for my works to be strong from the inside out.

“What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t shy from chances of failure. Damage changes you as a person.”

Deidara was ready to argue back that he had survived damage a human body wasn’t supposed to withstand, but Kanyu added, “Inner damage, which disregarding your health and attempting suicide are not.”

Until now, Deidara’s life had been a straight line: recognizing his art, developing his art, stealing the kinjutsu for his art, deflecting from Iwa for his art, becoming a terrorist for his art, blowing up villages in his free time for his art. Back then, happiness was measured by the size of his explosions. Before these inexplicable feelings took root in his chest, those were the good old days.

Deidara thought he was advancing in life, but if Kanyu was right, if trials and errors were necessary for growth, then he—

“Have I not changed at all?” Deidara asked, putting a hand over his heart. “I don’t think I have experienced failure, ever, unless it’s in a battle.”

“It’s never too late to start,” Kanyu said. “Even a failure as small as getting rejected can change you in ways you never imagined.”

* * *

Apart from the flower field and little grass, the Valley of Lies was short of plants. The vegetable patches Kanyu grew were scattered across her backyard, and fragments of herself—ceramic plant pots, garden gnomes, and outlandish statues decorated the area behind her house in a turbulent, not-so-stylish way. Deidara wriggled his way through the crowded yard, his stomach churning. Kanyu’s cooking left a lot to be desired, but she was a genial host, and she kept putting food in his bowl during dinner, kept complaining about how he was a picky eater. Kiiro, being the sweetheart he was, couldn’t stop her.

In Kanyu’s house, big news was to be announced at dinner. She divulged her plan to have a baby to Deidara with the brightest look on her face and a pair of undercooked teriyaki ribs. She also insisted that she would never let her child fall victim to Deidara’s Explosionism, which sounded less of a threat and more like a challenge to Deidara.

Sasori, meanwhile, had been locking himself in Kanyu’s workshop since the afternoon. Given his perfectionism, it wouldn’t be surprising if he didn’t come out until the title Pottery Master was etched on his grave. Deidara saw this as another opportunity to spend time with his partner. Acting on impulse while denying himself of shamelessness had become his specialty.

“Guess who’s here to bless you with his wonderful company again, yeah?” Deidara asked as he opened the door with a violent push.

It seemed to have startled Sasori a little as he glanced up at Deidara, widened his eyes, then looked away and straightened his back. His crouching figure stretched into a neutral sitting position. No glares, no lashing-out scorpion tails, no death threats—it was Sasori’s way of saying ‘Welcome”.

Deidara took off his mud-stained sandals and walked into the pottery studio. Kanyu’s workshop was the size of a large room, jam-packed with the earthy colors of the wall, the floor, the furniture, and ceramic pieces. It looked fresh, albeit not tidy, and littered with misplaced tools. Based on the arrangement of shelves, Deidara could tell the workshop was divided into three sections: a wheel-throwing section where Sasori stayed, a trimming and glazing section, and a storage section for clay and unfinished works.

The wheel-throwing section consisted of two portable pottery wheels accompanied by two stools and a couple of plastic buckets. Sasori was occupying one seat, so Deidara picked up the other and placed it across from where Sasori sat, with a pottery wheel between them.

“What are you making?” Deidara asked. It wasn’t until now that he noticed the whiteish, yet-to-dry substance sticking to some parts of Sasori’s hands.

To demonstrate, Sasori tapped the piece of clay on the wheel. It was in the shape of a round and flat sculpture with its edges curling slightly upward. The uneven distribution of clay—some places being paper-thin, some places being chunky thick—gave it a flappy look. Deidara frowned at this abomination. It would not survive the potent fire of the kiln.

“A dish?” Deidara guessed.

Sasori blinked slowly. “A puppet head.”

“Wow.”

Deidara fought back a grin as he rolled the supposed clay puppet part into a lump and passed it to Sasori, whose silence suggested his disappointment towards the monstrosity he created.

“Let’s start again. I’m going to help you, yeah? It has been years, but my skills are still sufficient.”

Sasori received the clay supply from Deidara in the same quiet manner dictating his previous moves. He began molding the misshapen lump of clay in his palms without much effort, with his slim, experienced fingers hooked around the white chunk. Now that Deidara thought about it, the term ‘experienced fingers’ brought to mind some very disturbing images…

“I don’t think you’re supposed to rotate it like that,” Deidara said.

“I have to make sure it doesn’t have any air bubbles left, or it’ll explo—” Sasori’s face turned blank. Then he squeezed the clay as realization set in, first in his clenched jaw and second in his squared shoulders. “If you’re trying to trick me into blowing things up, leave.”

“Oops,” Deidara smiled, impressed that Sasori was capable of seeing through his scheme so easily. “I thought that’s the point.”

Sasori was well versed in preparing clay for wheel-throwing, terrible at everything else. When he slammed the clay ball on the pottery wheel, bent over, and got into his ready position, Deidara told him to stop.

“You can’t apply enough pressure if you sit like that,” Deidara said. “Move closer.”

Sasori did what he was told. Deidara’s reaction to Sasori’s sudden conformity was a ticklish sensation on his skin, giddiness, even. Sasori had always been the superior one, “the leader of the pair,” as Leader put it. He had it all: a worldwide spy network, a war-borne title, and years and years battered by pain, fostered by power thirst, raised in bloodshed. None of those things mattered now. Now Deidara was in charge. He could order Sasori around. Even if it was a victory as petty as teaching Sasori pottery, to Deidara, it was a victory worthy of celebration.

“No, not like that. You have to hover above it,” Deidara blew out a sigh as Sasori’s knees collided with the wheel. “Dammit, spread your legs. Let your inner thighs touch it.”

“Three alphabets,” Sasori grumbled. “Three fucking alphabets, Deidara, and you have to phrase it like _that_.”

“Your fault for being so slow.”

Deidara and Sasori’s routine bickering lasted for about two hours as Deidara guided Sasori through the steps of shaping pottery with patience. Only, that patience sometimes slipped when Sasori made stupid mistakes or asked questions in doubt of Deidara’s ability. Nevertheless, Sasori was a fast learner. No human being could master the art of pottery overnight, but he was gradually getting the grip of the craft after multiple failures and starting again from scratch. His hand movements matured from stiff and awkward, to calmer, almost graceful.

Deidara watched Sasori’s fingertips glide across the damp surface of the clay. It turned out Sasori was not only good at utilizing hard material, but he was quite skilled in handling things that were soft, wet, and slippery as well… Deidara shushed himself before his imagination crossed a line.

The air turned dense, weighted down by Sasori’s concentrated chakra. He had got all the steps now; all that was left was practice. Deidara was not the type to let go of an argument, but he put away his competitiveness and propped his head in his palm, leaning forward to observe with mild interest. With each spin of the wheel, Sasori’s sculpture became taller and closer to completion.

“Hey,” Deidara said as he placed his hands on Sasori’s. The coldness never stopped tugging at his heartstrings no matter how prepared he was. “Put your hands at this angle. Yes, like that.”

They looked up in tandem. Sasori turned away.

“Danna, how can you shape your work without looking at it?”

With a slow turn of his head, Sasori riveted his eyes on the pottery wheel again. “…Yes.”

“Why are you being so weird?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you embarrassed? Is that it?” Deidara brought himself dangerously close, awaiting the fissures in Sasori’s composure, but his own veneer was slipping away. “You’re embarrassed because I’m touching you, yeah?”

To Deidara’s surprise, Sasori didn’t waver. He swatted Deidara’s hands away in a harsh motion of his own. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I no longer have emotions. I can’t be embarrassed.”

“But do you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“Me touching you.”

There was a lengthy delay of reply following Deidara’s words. Sasori picked up a needle tool on the floor and pricked it through the bottom of his spinning sculpture, measuring its thickness. “If I can’t feel when I’m touched, I’ll be at a major disadvantage.”

“1/3 inch. Not bad, a little thinner and you’re good to go.” Deidara took the tool from Sasori and cast a cursory glance over it before putting it away. “Your chakra pathways are still intact, yeah? So you still know whether you’re in contact with something, but not the actual texture of it?”

“Pretty much,” Sasori said. “I know that you’re touching me, but I don’t know if your skin is soft or rough, warm or cold. I can sense your chakra, but that’s not counted as feeling, I suppose.”

“It’s impossible to have mushy hands when you’re a shinobi,” Deidara grinned. “But mine are warm. Onoki liked using my hands as his heat packs. He said they shooed away the winter’s cold.”

“You give the most useless facts.”

“I bet yours are freezing cold. Your human hands, I mean.” Deidara rubbed his palms against each other. “They say the colder your hands are, the more loyal you are in love.”

Sasori raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know I’m loyal in love?”

“Just a feeling.”

“I don’t do love, you know that.”

“You can’t take a joke, you know that?”

Sasori gave Deidara a half-smile as they settled into a companionable silence. Deidara got up and wandered around the workshop in search of things of interest. Once in a while, their eyes would meet, and Deidara would give Sasori an acknowledging nod to let him know he was doing alright with his sculpture. Deidara skimmed through Kanyu’s failed products on a shelf at the back of the room, examining every artless nook and spots of chipped paint to dispel his jumbling thoughts. Tonight had been nothing but fulfilling. What Deidara didn’t know was that it was going to be even more fulfilling, topped with a slice of awkwardness.

“The thing you said earlier, is it true?” Sasori asked. “The thing about… you liking guys.”

Deidara almost dropped the ceramic mug he was holding. “So that’s the reason why you’ve been acting all weird.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Sasori said. “I’ve been out of touch with the whole sexuality thing… the whole humanity thing for so long. Last time I knew, there were only male and female.”

Deidara returned the mug to its rightful place with a loud thud. “How insensitive.”

“Oh? Is it a taboo, then?”

“You’re really saying that with a straight face.”

“Are we not supposed to discuss it?”

Deidara approached Sasori and sat down, this time not across Sasori but alongside him. “I taught you how to make pottery, and now you’re expecting me to give you a sex-ed lesson.”

“Tell me, I’m curious.” Sasori’s indifferent expression was getting on Deidara’s nerves. “What sorts of things have they added in the dictionary since I was gone?”

“Just some new terms—you have some excess clay there,” Deidara said as he handed Sasori a rib tool. “Anyhow, there are guys who like guys, girls who like girls, folks who like both, and folks who like neither.”

“So, me.”

“Perhaps,” Deidara rolled his eyes. “There are people who don’t want to identify with any group, too. Some are even trying to turn themselves into the opposite sex.”

Sasori shifted in his seat. “I don’t understand why humans feel the need to over-complicate things. It’s just sexual attraction, right? People are attracted to other people. Why categorize?”

“Some people are obsessed with labels,” Deidara said as Sasori’s expression twisted into half-bewilderment, half-disgust. The info-dump was overwhelming to someone who extracted his own humanity at the age of 15, it seemed. “Whatever the hell people are attracted to, an animal, an object, a concept, there’s probably a term for it.”

Sasori’s distaste was more and more palpable as Deidara went on.

“Anything can be sexualized,” Deidara smirked. “But don’t worry, there’s not a term for people who are attracted to a piece of wood, as far as I know.”

“Aren’t you?”

Deidara was close to dropping dead. “That’s not very funny.”

Small moments in life were what made life precious. The moments that flashed by, lasting for less than a split second. They barely gave you a taste yet left you craving for more, hanging in the residue of emptiness that remained after their demise. Sasori’s face when he finished his sculpture was one of those moments.

“I’m done.” Sasori sprang up from his seat.

It was the first time Deidara saw Sasori smiling with teeth. Darkness poured through the cracks of the wall panels, but Sasori’s excitement was so rare it lit up the room. Deidara froze in his spot. He was in broad daylight.

“Now I’ll have to wait for it to dry, correct?” Sasori’s voice receded into his default tone. He removed the clay from the wheel with a wire tool, laid it on a wooden tray, then carried it to a cupboard.

“Not completely.” Deidara took a look at Sasori’s newborn sculpture. It was rough with some bumpy patches of clay, a few rounds of refinement away from reaching finesse. “Put it on the wheel again for trimming when it’s almost dry.”

“Got it.” Sasori stretched. “You head back now. I can take care of it myself from here.”

“I want to help with the firing too.”

“You’re going to make my sculpture explode. Don’t even try to deny it.”

“But art—”

“Is not an explosion,” Sasori interrupted. “Come on, it’s late and I won’t carry you back.”

“I’ve got an idea.” Deidara’s words started to trail. He hadn’t slept well these days, and his eyelids were screaming for respite, but something in him didn’t want to back down. “How about I tell you stories while we wait, yeah?”

Drowsiness tugged at the corners of Deidara’s eyes, dragging him to the nearest surface to rest his head. He let himself fall then jerked up. The movement shot a twinge of pain through his temples. He opened his mouth and rambled whatever came to mind.

The tales Deidara told were neither clear nor coherent, tiny snippets of his life he pulled out from memory. He told Sasori about the collection of Icha Icha novels buried deep inside his old sensei’s drawer, about the clay spiders he planted in Kurotsuchi’s braids, about the gush of chakra ripping through the flesh on his palms and chest when he first activated Iwa’s kinjutsu. Deidara could never forget the most important story, his greatest ambition: to turn the moon into a ticking bomb.

Slumber nagged at Deidara, and this time he surrendered, submitting every control he had left over his body. He collapsed to the side. His head hit something hard, though not hard as the floor.

Deidara laid his head on Sasori’s shoulder, amazed that he was still alive and well. Sasori’s fingers weren’t so experienced now. They walked in timid steps up Deidara’s back and brushed his hair in stiff strokes and clumsy pats. Deidara looked up and found his reflection blinking back at him in those subhuman, hazy brown eyes. To call leaning on Sasori’s shoulder an enjoyable experience was a far stretch; Deidara’s neck hurt for having to bend low, and Sasori’s hair-ruffling brought no relief but a worsening headache.

But those fingers knew how to cut open people more than expressing care. Deidara’s head knew more of the taste of explosions than responding to intimate touches. So Deidara laid still, letting those blood-soaked fingers burn across his skull.

“How does your hair feel?” Sasori asked.

“Silky smooth.”

“Liar.”

“It’s the truth.” Deidara yawned. “Yours feel like the end of a broomstick. Do you know that?”

“I have no ways to find out,” Sasori tapped Deidara’s back. “Well? Ready to go back yet?”

“I’m going to do it.”

“Do what? Blow up the moon?”

Kanyu was right. Sometimes you had to dive head-on into the thing that scared you. Everything Sasori said today, if anything, had further confirmed Deidara’s one-sided feelings, but the heart was stubborn. It clung onto every glance, every change of tone, every touch.

“Danna, do you think I can make it?”

“I want to say no.” Sasori gave him a quizzical look. “But if I managed to turn myself into a puppet, and Hidan managed to gain immortality through his crazy rituals, then you may have a chance.”

Deidara laughed until he was out of breath. “A chance, hm? I wonder…”

Sleep took over him.


	3. Flowers are Dying Corpses

Donning the emblem of crimson clouds on one’s black cloak, a ruthless cut across one’s headband, a ring on one’s hand, and color on fresh nails equaled chaos. Tranquil days were rare, uneventful trips a revelation, a good night’s sleep—undisturbed by Leader’s words droning in his ears—virtually non-existent.

“Sasori, Deidara, you’ve been assigned with a new task.” Pain’s command stirred Deidara out of his precious slumbers. “Connect for more info.”

The voice that forced its way into Deidara’s head was distorted and intermittent, per usual, yet never waning in audacity. Knowing that begging for five more minutes of sleep meant earning a five-million-ryo payroll deduction, Deidara hoisted himself up in a series of curses marked by yawns. Next to him, by the side of the bed, was a very startled redhead.

Sasori was hovering above the bed with one outstretched arm like he was about to grab something. Then, as soon as his gaze landed on Deidara, he reset to his default state: standing upright, lips tight, and eyes soberly yet dreamily half-lidded.

It took Deidara a good five seconds to surmise an explanation of what was going on. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to kill me in my sleep?”

“Funny,” replied Sasori, “how that’s the first thing you think of when you see me reaching for you.”

Possibilities raced through Deidara’s mind, but the mind of an abruptly-awoken man wasn’t the best jury. Through the haze of a just relinquished dream, he saw nothing but a cunning puppet wielder, a master manipulator, an echo of flesh and blood. Such images all pointed to attempted murder, what else?

Then it came all at once, flooding into his system. The heart and its stupid reasoning overshadowed all doubts. Kanyu’s advice, last night’s coming-out conversation, the awkward graze of dexterous fingers against his scalp, and soft mattress supporting his weight in place of what should have been dusty wood panels.

The first drops of daylight crawled through the blinds and illuminated everything, _everything_ , but Deidara was only occupied with one bright spot that landed on Sasori’s cheek.

The surrealness of the situation was enough to silence Deidara’s “thank you”.

“I could’ve been trying to strangle you or tucking you in,” The blanket wrinkled as Sasori slumped down on the bed. “Have fun guessing out which.”

Another call from Leader averted Sasori’s attention, to which Deidara heaved a sigh of relief. It was the first time he associated something positive with receiving orders because, as much as he loved arguing, sometimes Sasori, or rather, the overpowering emotions Sasori inspired, caught him tongue-tied.

The Artist Duo settled into their meditation postures with their backs straight, legs folded and hands clasped in a Ram seal.

The feeling was akin to death.

Deidara’s chakra fanned out, trickled between his bones, then slipped out of his grasp. Streams of consciousness fled from his control, too, weaving through the cracks of time and space to arrive at Leader’s location. The world around plunged into darkness, and it was the habitual darkness of the Akatsuki hideout that lured Deidara and Sasori in.

How artless it would be, Deidara thought, to die like this: slowly falling into oblivion, seeing no faces, hearing no blasts, smelling no blood at all.

“We received a request from the Taiyou clan in Muragakure. They want us to wipe out their rival clan, the Yotsuki,” Leader wasted no time in his delivery of the new mission. “You know how things are in Mura, yes?”

Deidara opened his mouth to answer, only to press his lips together seconds later when nothing came to mind.

“I do—" Sasori passed Deidara a glance, and by the way his glance congealed into a glare, Deidara could tell his partner’s negligible dose of patience for the day had run short. “It’s a small village on the East coast. Tiny population, low resources, mediocre jutsu. No surprise it failed to compete with the big guys.” Sasori breezed through the village’s introduction. “From what I know, it’s supposed to have stopped offering shinobi service a long time ago.”

Leader’s swirling eyes emerged from behind his cloak’s collar. “That was the case, until two clans, the Taiyou and Yotsuki, rose. They gave the people a promise that was too good to be true: to develop a powerful new jutsu and restore the village. In return—"

“They want power, yeah?” Deidara asked, nodding to himself. For someone with zero knowledge nor interest in politics, he sure had been caught in-between a multitude of inter-village conflicts and political warfare. “The authority over the whole village. A power struggle in the disguise of a noble cause.”

Sasori gave him a look. “I think everyone here already knew that.”

“You—"

“Deidara, Sasori.”

A worthy leader was one who understood his team members well. As for Leader, this understanding extended to the point where he could sense potential arising conflict between members from their tones of voices and dismiss it with ease.

“Success is now in the Yotsuki’s favor. According to rumors, they’ve got their hands on a rare kinjutsu,” Leader proceeded with his speech, Rinnegan flaring despite his astral projection of a body. “The Taiyou want two things: information on their rival’s secret first, a massacre second. This means you’ll need to do more than dropping a bomb or an army of puppets.”

Deidara rubbed his chin in contemplation. “We just need to capture the clan leaders for interrogation, then.”

“You need to think further than that,” Sasori said. “Not anyone can wield a kinjutsu. Only a handful of people have the capacity to successfully perform one and not die. This is a dying village we’re talking about, so even fewer.”

Sasori’s last words lingered in the air for more than his impatience allowed. “Human experiments don’t always work, but it might be possible to extract a kinjutsu’s effect from an individual when it’s a corporeal one.”

The tongues of Deidara’s hand-mouths writhed out of their depository and flashed in the dark. Deidara grinned and added, “One that mutates the human body.”

“Yes, like the one from Iwa,” Sasori said as he turned away to regard Leader with an expectant look. “I’m thinking we can capture those with the kinjutsu as well. They’re probably not easy to identify, as they may strive to hide their power, but it’s better to be extra careful.”

“Excellent idea as usual, Sasori.” Leader’s implacable mannerisms relaxed a little at this suggestion. “I’m adding that to your mission objectives. Bring the Yotsuki’s leaders along with individuals who may wield the clan’s secret kinjutsu back alive.”

“May?” Sasori asked.

“You won’t have time to confirm the capture-ability of every suspect,” replied Leader as he regained his stoicism. “Besides, the more kinjutsu users we’re able to deliver, the more generous they’ll be with their rewards, and the more reliant they’ll be on the Akatsuki’s service.”

Deidara’s eyes were roving over the vacancies in their meeting circles when he felt four suspenseful eyes hooked on him. He scratched his cheek. “…The easier it’ll be to assert control over them in the future, yeah?”

Sasori relieved him from the intense goggling session by veering his gaze to the side.

“You’re getting closer to aligning yourself with the Akatsuki’s way,” Leader said, audibly pleased.

“The Akatsuki’s way.” Deidara made no effort to mask the sarcasm dripping off his tone. Why did that sound like a legitimate shinobi mantra?

“More like your way” was his intended next retort, but in the suffocating atmosphere of the Akatsuki’s hideout and the menace lurking therein, he found himself settling for a simple “I understand”.

Sasori was startled by this development—this was proven true by the ripples on his chakra-boosted avatar.

“Well,” mumbled Deidara in a voice that screamed can-I-sleep-now. “Anything we know about the enemy’s fighting style? Element?”

Came Leader’s prompt answer: “Wind, I believe.”

“Good,” Deidara said. He thrived on challenges, but battling against a clan full of Lightning users would be pushing it too far.

“You have five days. I’ll have Zetsu hand you the specific details later,” Leader said finally.

Deidara first joined the Akatsuki with a grudge, a couldn’t-care-less attitude, and a thirst for revenge upon the famed Sharingan. Four years into membership, he gained a crush on his partner, a _plan_ for revenge, and a decent amount of curiosity mixed with respect for the man he worked under.

Time did things to people, stimulated progress. The majority of the time Deidara spent bound to the Akatsuki’s clutches could be considered progress in the broadest definition of the term, minus the crushing bit, which was either regression or transition into a new period.

As for other members, Deidara had come to the point where he recognized their artistic value (if there were any), raw to the touch yet alluring to the mind—the unexplored kind of artistry. The murderous kind of artistry. The paths that lent them beast-like power must have been treacherous. The waters they walked to arrive at the same destination varied in depths and perils.

Being in the Akatsuki was like watching the world burn, or rather, causing the world to burn.

In each person’s eyes, the world must burn a little different.

“Do you know why I summoned you myself?” Leader turned to Deidara, his image flickering on and off against the darkness that threatened to swallow it whole.

“Uh, Zetsu’s busy?”

“Take this as a warning, Deidara.” Deidara did not like the way Leader drew out his name. “I know your fighting style is intense, but tone it down. You don’t want to be hunted down by other villages before we capture the Tailed Beasts.”

“Understood, Leader.” Deidara fell out of the dark cave and bounced back into sleep anew.

* * *

“They’re fragile. Be careful!” Kanyu shrieked.

She was either unaware or actively ignoring the stiffness in his gestures and the suggestion of unwillingness between his creased brows. Deidara suspected it was the latter as she shoved her parting gift into his arms, and he received the item reluctantly, albeit with extra gentleness.

“They are in full blossom. Pretty, right?” A full smile blossomed on Kanyu’s face.

Deidara stared down at the flower bouquet nesting in his hands, articulateness far beyond him. The verdant green fronds curled against his cracked palms in their dreamlike softness. The dirty, greyed-out fabric of his robe expressed more age—years of defying the sun and wind and the explosions while trailing across five continents—when put together with the flowers’ blinding white. 

He traced a careful hand along the thornless stems, torn between wanting to celebrate Kanyu’s present and wanting to watch their petals crippled between his fingers. It was what fueled his art: the need to destroy destructible things.

“Hello? Deidara? Deidara of Iwagakure? Deidara the inter-continental insurgent? Deidara the blond-haired princess? Deidara the struggling artist? Deidara the partner admirer—"

“ _Stop_.” Deidara, who was forced back into reality at the increasing ridiculousness of Kanyu’s name-calling act, held up the flower bouquet at her. “Or I’ll shove this up your nostrils.”

“You were zoning out,” she pouted. “What were you musing about? Sasori’s cerulean eyes?”

“His eyes _are_ brown.”

“Ooh, introspective.” Kanyu nudged Deidara with her elbow. “Having a crush changes things, huh?”

Deidara scoffed. “I’m always introspective. How do you expect me to make art without reflecting, yeah?”

“Is that so?” Kanyu asked. “You seem too occupied with your explosions to give a damn about anything else to me.”

Something inside Deidara clicked. He did find himself thinking about a lot of things other than art lately, but before he could lapse into another round of reminiscence, Kanyu flicked his forehead. “A hungry-to-blow-shit-up face and a deep-in-thoughts face look different, you know?”

He remained silent, holding no objection to her words though he wanted to.

“What do you think we’re going to do with this? Decorate our lair with it?” Deidara said after a while, changing the course of the conversation. Then he occupied his hands by plucking some best-looking flowers from the bunch and dropping them in his pocket (a black hole borne from his refusal to carry around anything but clay). “Yeah. I’ll just casually put this bouquet on the Demon of the Six Paths statue or something, or pin it to Hiruko’s skull and hope I’ll make it out unpoisoned—"

“Hey.” Kanyu tilted her head at him. “Are you going to do something risky?”

“What?”

“You’ve been acting strange,” she said, twirling a strand of golden-brown hair. “Like you have a big plan coming up or something.”

“You’re not… entirely wrong.” The next thing Deidara did in avoidance of eye contact was hand-brushing dust off his clothes. “You said I need to change, yeah? You may be right, after all.”

“That’s quite an improvement, coming from a self-centered prick like you.”

“Thanks. I know I’m quite a big thing,” Deidara replied with much sass, but his frown vanished as fast as the day’s heat left them. “All this time, all I’ve ever cared about is myself and my art.” He swallowed hard. “So, when someone else entered the picture, I didn’t know what to do.”

As the afternoon hours faded into sunset, Kanyu’s sneer melted into a soft smile. 

Unknown pressure melted off Deidara’s shoulders.

He exhaled shallow breaths into his palms. “I want to do what you said. Fail. Change. Seek closure. Give these feelings a chance. But before that, I also want to look for new perspectives.”

“Oh my god,” Kanyu’s jaw went slack. “You’re asking Akatsuki members.”

There was no use denying it now. “I’m asking Akatsuki members.”

“For _dating advice_?”

“For _new perspectives_.”

“ _Wow_.” Kanyu clasped a hand over her mouth, barely successful in reining in her laughter. “You’re a genius.”

Deidara gave a defeated smile. “You won’t see me for a while, but when it’s all over, I promise—”

Deidara was met with sudden warmth as a pair of hands encircled his.

“I’ll be waiting for good news, Deidara.”

The setting sun painted the hunching houses and messy clay batches and explosion-inducing kilns in mellow shades. It was not the end, only a new beginning. Deidara would visit Kanyu sometime in the future, mull over his childhood in Iwa while sniffing clay smoke and listening to popping clayware again.

Still, Kanyu’s smile bid the taste of farewell.

At Deidara’s side, the heavy thumps of a Hiruko-clad Sasori were approaching, hauling killing intent and complaints about the time under his breath. It provided little distraction from the tightness in his chest when Kanyu squeezed his hands.

Had she ever learned the definition of personal space?

For some reasons Deidara would rather not dwell on for long, he wasn’t against it: this human warmth—so different from the half-human-half-puppet kind of warmth he’d got used to—this normalcy, this ordinary companionship…

Deidara knew he shouldn’t make too many connections, so that he was ready for death at any given time. He had spent most of his living years dreaming of his dying moments, the marvelous end of human’s fleeting existence, the pinnacle of artistic beauty. Sasori and Kanyu, though—he could allow some leeway in that case.

What he didn’t know was that there was going to be too, too much leeway, with too, too many people.

* * *

Zetsu’s report was bad news to Sasori and atrocious news to Deidara.

The area they would wreak havoc on this mission was of mountainous terrain, with steep slopes encouraging miraculous falls and rugged bedrocks cushioning those falls by cutting into flesh. Muragakure’s buildings and farms lay strewn on tiers carved onto a cluster of hills: depressing strokes of brown on an equally depressing, tree-lacking canvas. It must have been magic—a village managed to survive on such low resources, not to say produce shinobi.

On the far end of the land encompassing the village, Deidara and Sasori’s battlefield stretched across corroded soil on a separate mountain slope, isolated from everyone else. According to Zetsu, the Yotsuki had moved there a few years ago, claiming that a secluded area was pivotal to the development of their new technique. In response, the authorities had readily approved.

The Yotsuki set up their accommodation with apparent forethought. The mountain was lofty with sides too rocky to travel fast, and the high altitude guaranteed harsh weather whose cold slaps stung. An ambush or planting landmines were out of the question, too. The meticulous Yotsuki shinobi had adorned the place with some kind of miniature chakra network used to detect intruders.

“There’s nothing in our favor. Guess we’ll have to make a grand entrance.” Deidara thumbed through Zetsu’s report scroll.

The Akatsuki’s scouting specialist had a peculiar way of creating his mission overview reports. They were twenty percent useful information, seventy percent ~~hilarious~~ unnecessary jokes and ~~witty~~ horrible notes, and the remaining ten Black Zetsu’s attempt to cross out and sabotage those seventy.

“Have you ever not made a grand entrance?” Sasori gestured to the portraits strewn on the ground between them. “There are certain people we must keep alive. Don’t go around mindlessly blowing people up.”

Deidara stared at the faces of the Yotsuki’s leaders (Zetsu was surprisingly good at drawing people) and tried to commit them to memory. “You said you would take them, yeah? I get the fun part.”

“Right. The fun part,” Sasori repeated. “Even if I’m the one handling them, don’t you think you should at least be able to tell them apart? In case someone escapes my sight?”

Deidara waved it off. “Got it, got it. Such an old man.”

“Do you even remember our plan?”

“You take the clan heads, I take the massacre,” replied Deidara, having Uchiha flashbacks. “If one of us find anyone with some weird jutsu, immediately go after and capture them.”

“Both of us.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s important,” Sasori insisted. “You must not leave my side, Deidara. We agreed on this.”

“It’s not technically ‘your’ side, yeah.”

“You’ll be dead if anything happens to my main body,” Sasori grunted, flattening the report scroll on the ground and using a tree branch to scrawl on the space unoccupied by Zetsu’s brush strokes. “As I said, seeing how cautious the Yotsuki are, there’s no way they haven’t expected this. Look at the location, the intrusion detection system, the rocky matrix—”

The paper crinkled as Sasori doodled a house on it. “When we attack, they’re most likely to hide the clan figures away” —Sasori circled his makeshift pen on a corner of the house— “this can be done through a secret route or something.”

Deidara touched the folds Sasori created on the scroll. “Isn’t the most logical thing to do is to hide the people with access to the kinjutsu first? Yeah, sure, the clan heads hold the secret, but those people—they _are_ the secrets.”

“We’re not sure if those people even exist. Maybe they are the clan heads themselves, maybe the kinjutsu results in the death of the user. We don’t know that. _But,_ ” Sasori said as he smacked the branch against the side of Deidara’s head. “We know for a fact that the Yotsuki have leaders, and those leaders are the masterminds behind this damn thing.”

Only when Sasori drew the branch away did Deidara realize he had just been assaulted. “As expected of the wit of my partner, yeah.”

“I should’ve expected my partner’s stupidity,” said Sasori. “But you surprised me every time you open your mouth.”

Deidara laughed more than he should.

He walked himself through the plan again before reciting it to Sasori. “Let me get this straight. You transfer your core into another puppet, blend in with the Yotsuki, find the secret route, capture the targets, while I—”

“You and my real body,” Sasori drew two stick figures at the bottom of the scroll, then stabbed the pointy end of his pen through the head of one, twisting it. “Take care of the rest.”

“Why do I have to stay with you, yeah?”

“My body consists of various weapons and mechanisms. It’ll give me a lot of hassle to repair it if it gets damaged,” Sasori said, throwing the branch behind him. He rose and lifted his upcoming vessel, a plain-looking man in the form of a puppet, from the ground with fine chakra strings. “Do you mind? I need to get changed.”

After another tedious rehash of their battle strategy, Deidara and Sasori-the-empty-shell flew into the Yotsuki’s territory with the real Sasori nuzzled up inside a hole in Deidara’s clay bird, pulling the strings from below.

They thrust through the intrusion detecting barrier draping over the area. The chakra surge was too weak to cause any damage, any feeling of pain at all, yet strong enough to notify the place’s dwellers.

The scene before them moved fast: A small group of Yotsuki-nin streamed out from jutting houses, then twenty, then a hundred; and looking at his enemies from above, at this distance, through the glint of his scope, Deidara couldn’t help but wonder whether the expression on their face was ecstasy.

They were about to witness art. 

This massacre was nowhere as impressive as the one Itachi executed or the time Sasori exterminated a whole nation, because the Yotsuki residence consisted of only a handful of tile-roofed buildings perched on a precipitous mountain path. With a brandish of Deidara’s arm, an army of tiny clay spiders cascaded down the land. They crawled on every living surface and clung to warm skin, spreading his chakra to every corner.

Deidara shut his eyes, then flashed them open again. If he focused enough, he could track the movements of any shinobi parasitized by his spiders.

“I’m not going to let any of you escape, yeah.” His whisper climbed into a shout. “Sasori!”

From aside Deidara, the empty Sasori stood silent. From behind him, the real Sasori’s chakra-laced fingers wiggled out of the opening of his retreat.

The chakra threads had been refined to the point they were invisible to the untrained eyes, but Deidara could tell Sasori was, by some complex procedure he refused to understand, connecting his chakra to his real body’s limbs and chakra-weaving chest compartment. It was a way for him to control other puppets indirectly, through his puppet body.

Before Deidara could blink, a troop of puppets had materialized around him.

“That should be enough for support?” the real Sasori asked.

“It’s way too many.”

A typhoon of spiraling wind currents, which gave Deidara the impression of a grouped effort, stormed in their direction. Deidara’s clay bird tilted just in time to evade death, but not an acute wind blade that obliterated its right wing.

The bird crashed down, its whiteness resemblant of a falling angel amid the pitch-black sky. Deidara dove for the ground with numerous puppets by his side and a chakra shield in front—he knew Sasori had a shield installed somewhere, and had activated it by disjointing Sasori-the-empty-shell’s segmented arm mid-leap.

To bedazzle his opponents even more, Deidara threw some bombs into the mix, setting the sky ablaze as he descended through the rain of wind attacks.

“This is the definition of a grand entrance, yeah!” He smiled and turned to his companion, awaiting a sigh, a glare, even a deadly blow, but it was only Sasori’s lifeless face that stared back.

His smile turned skewed.

Deidara was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Sasori’s living core contained the entirety of his existence, and his ‘real’ body wasn’t real: it wasn’t Sasori, only a replica of the delicate human form he had shed.

Sasori now resided in another puppet: an average middle-aged man who was clambering out of the damaged clay bird at the periphery of his vision. Deidara watched as Sasori mixed into the crowd before turning to the one next to him.

“You’d better work your ass off not to hold me back,” Deidara muttered to the empty Sasori shell. The puppet jiggled as if vexed by his words, and the other puppets around Deidara soon danced to the rhythm of its fluid movements, steering sharp blades through the enemies’ flesh.

“Your speed is too slow. You can’t catch up with me at this pace.” Deidara blitzed through the crowd of Yotsuki-nin with a light-hearted C1 bombardment. “Let’s hope danna can’t hear conversations through his chakra strings because first, it’s ridiculous, and second, he’s going to come for me—”

A powerful gust of wind caught Deidara off balance, and he slammed his upper arm on the ground to keep his head from being split by a pointy rock. He could only hope he didn’t fracture any bones.

Hands still on the ground, Deidara bent down to fend off another wave, and when the third wind blade struck, he scrambled for one of Sasori’s puppets, yanked it by the wrist, and swung it in the air. The puppet shattered under the impact of the attack.

“Now Sasori’s really going to come for me.”

Wind gusts heaved up a gigantic amount of dust from the ground, and dusty air plus rocky terrain was a perfect recipe for gashes with nasty infections. It didn’t take a medic to know this, but God forbid if Deidara had enough time to do anything more than glancing at the flash of pink meat mingled with blood under his elbow.

The image of his necrotic limbs lingered at the back of Deidara’s mind as he blasted through piles and piles of shinobi with no hint of a kinjutsu in use.

The truth was that C1 bombs were insufficient. Deidara couldn’t use more destructive ones since they would deny him the chance to engage with every opponent in close distance, and Sasori’s body would break.

This was a really shitty strategy.

Deidara bounced as high as his legs allowed him. He pivoted to dodge some wind jutsu as clay figures shot out of his palms, aiming themselves at his assailants.

He snatched the sword out of Sasori’s grip, but what he pulled away was the puppet’s right hand.

His feet found solace on another puppet. He stepped on the hard surface of the puppet’s back and did a handspring, leaping forward, into the gusty air of blood, sweat, and tears; of vision-blurring grime, spinning vortexes, and explosion dust.

“I’ll give it back later,” Deidara sent the core-less Sasori an apologetic smile. It was as quiet as its core-equipped version. 

Wielding a sword—well, a hand grabbing a sword, at his disposal, Deidara advanced further into the Yotsuki’s land. He bounced on people’s heads and skipped along the winding road, employing shunshin regularly to shorten the distance.

There was a moment, a very fleeting moment, a moment between life and death, noise and silence, before chaos ensued.

A moment before an explosion.

And it was also in that moment that laughter echoed in tune with the boom of his explosive feats, graceful footwork unfolded on top of his human stepping stones. Then another, and Deidara was dazed, bruised, lying limp on the ground and coughing up blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-dah, one of my proudest chapters to date! Writing fight scenes is not my strong suit, yet this one came out better than I expected. Hate to leave you hanging at that cliffhanger, but the next chapter may not be up in two weeks' time as my normal posting schedule. I try to write a few chapters ahead, but recently some problems came up with one of the future chapters and I have to rewrite the whole thing. Anyway, don't worry, it'll only be a month or two. 
> 
> Also, thank you everyone for all the wonderful support this work has received! "Crevasse" was, in the beginning, a passion project, but seeing how other people enjoy it brings me so much joy.


	4. Chapter 4: When The Petals Fall

Deidara had sworn to never let himself fall into this situation again: skin other than the soles of his feet brushing the ground, that rich metallic taste in his throat, eyes squinting against the faux resplendence of another’s trickery, wondering if it was art—

It was not art. It was _everything_ but art.

And those eyes. Those fucking eyes.

Deidara realized it the moment he grew aware of the tickling of rocks under his back, the buzzing in his ears, and the sting of sweat in his left arm’s gaping wound: reddened by the Sharingan or not, those eyes were the same. They looked down to him the same, disdained his art the same.

“You’re all the fucking same breed,” he grunted through the burn in his mouth. The taste burst out then, warmth seeping into his red-stained lips.

The night was young, illuminated by the dusky moonlight that, in its glorious fluidity, failed to bleed into the cracks on something bright. Something metal. Something like a forehead protector. In front of him, smudgy lines turned clear; colors coalesced to form a man’s figure, but Deidara knew those eyes before he knew the bulk of their owner. He knew them the same way he knew the animosity towards his art before they became voices. The man before him had deep-set black eyes tuck neatly under Mura’s insignia, positioned in a way they appeared to have sunk all the way back into his skull, ablaze with soon-to-be-shattered determination and rectitude.

The Yotsuki-nin raised both of his weapon-free hands.

Deidara knew he had to do something. He twisted, savored the pain in every muscle, and jammed the heel of his foot into the man’s shin before he could form a hand seal. Then Deidara leapt up to land another kick in the man’s guts—a delicious _crunch_ between the hardness of his sandals and the tenderness of human flesh.

Nothing changed. The man’s eyes were pools of still darkness, unwavering, frustratingly proud. Deidara caught a glimpse of his insanity in their righteousness. He blinked at his reflection: wide smile, blond hair studded with grime, blood across bared teeth.

The edges of his vision were blurred. Deidara was, in the end, a fool chasing after victory, a donkey chasing after the ever-bouncing carrot at the end of the stick. Pain entered his leg, but it was a mild distraction from the throbbing headache. A hole in his knee. The cut of a wind-infused blade was all the cleaner than he remembered. The man had stabbed him while bracing the full impact of his kick. Deidara launched himself backward, meaning to secure a foothold on the ground, but ended up airborne as the Yotsuki-nin flung more weaponry at him from under his sleeves.

Not that it mattered. His injured knee wouldn’t have served him even if he landed.

So Deidara chose to fly.

With a burst of chakra, Deidara brought to life his masterpiece. Majestic, magnificent, with the size that overshadowed the sun, the color that washed the brightest of skies, and the breaths that vanquished the bravest of Wind users. The C2 dragon hushed Deidara onto its back and took off, wings sending gales sweeping over the barren land. The Yotsuki-nin’s expression twitched. Deidara laughed.

What came next was a power demonstration, really. Chakra-blue shuriken and rage-fueled gusts found mini clay missiles and C2’s pretentious display. The crescent above turned coy, its light losing vivacity in the presence of the two shinobi’s sparks.

At some point during this prelude, Deidara regained a slice of his composure. He drew in a lungful of dust filled with air and felt the pulses of his heart slackening. Only then did he begin to see things for what they were, to see more than darkness.

He was above what seemed like a training ground behind the Yotsuki mansion. The murmurs of battles—Sasori was never the loud type—echoed in the distance, but here, things were uneventful. Deidara couldn’t sense any chakra signature nearby nor uncover any clue of upcoming back-up. All of these pointed to one thing: he was isolated _on purpose_. That and his opponent was withholding a mass-destructive technique.

Why hadn’t he picked it up sooner? The Yotsuki-nin possessed that precious kinjutsu, the key to their mission’s success. He was one to be captured—not cut, not slain, not burned—

_Not. Burned._

Still, Deidara found his thoughts wandering, blood pounding in his ears, gooseflesh on his arms. He dreamt of the Sharingan and the moon’s whispers; the terror in the man’s agleam eyes, his existence refined to ashes.

It was something the Academy never taught you—the ugly side of battles. Sometimes Deidara had to stop himself from drifting. Sometimes he could only pray nothing inside was broken. With eccentricity superseding poise, he tore out some parts of his cloak and wrapped them around his wounds. The feeling of the cloth against the pulpy mess on his arm and leg caused him to cringe.

_Time to get this over with._

The C2 dragon flexed a final mid-air flip before diving for its target. The force of an over-one-hundred-thousand-pound creature crashing down rendered the Yotsuki-nin useless. Deidara couldn’t feel the cold. At the same time, a dozen clay missiles charged from all corners. Chills climbed up Deidara’s spine; this performance was going to be like no other.

His scream ripped through the quietude of the night. “KATS—"

A blink.

The Yotsuki-nin was behind him, kunai angled at his throat.

“Shunshin?” Deidara groaned.

“It’s over for you,” came the reply.

“Tell me about it, yeah?” Deidara said, much attuned to the splash of his sweat on the weapon pressed against his skin.

“What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” The Yotsuki-nin said. “Is it the kinjutsu?”

Deidara raised a brow. “So you _do_ have the kinjutsu.”

“Stupid of me to admit that, I know.”

“I’ve seen enough to not call it stupidity,” Deidara picked his words carefully. One of his hands snuck its way downward. He needed it. Nails one inch deep in the white sludge and its softness would mute the itch on his neck and the pang that shot through his head just now. “When an enemy admits to something they should’ve kept secret, it could only be because no one had ever lived to tell the tale.”

The grip around Deidara’s neck loosened a little then tightened again. “What about you? Has anyone lived after cornering you like this?”

_Of course not. No one can survive against my supreme ART._ “It’s pretty rare, actually.”

“Well then— what are you doing?”

Deidara was busted. The Yotsuki-nin slipped his free hand into his left pouch and yanked out its content. A sigh was his only choice of protest. Deidara waited in boredom as the other man continued disarming him, rummaging through all his pockets until reaching his right pouch.

“Hey,” Deidara said.

“What? I’m not going to let you keep your weapons on.”

“It’s fine. You can have them,” Deidara rotated his wrist so that his palm was facing the Yotsuki-nin. The hand-mouth flashed a grin. “I always keep some in my palms anyway.”

They fell for it every time. As expected, the Yotsuki-nin lunged backward before robbing the last bit of Deidara’s clay supply. He crossed his arms before his chest for defense.

Deidara’s neck made a cracking sound when he stretched it. The blood felt dry under his fingertips. “Idiot.”

“You fucking—"

The Yotsuki-nin didn’t have the chance to finish his slur. Deidara’s mastery at his arts meant it took mere seconds: He crafted a human-sized scorpion from his remaining clay and launched it at the man. The creature’s legs sprung to enclasp its prey in its rugged claws.

Deidara didn’t have the chance to finish his all-time favorite phrase. As soon as the scorpion went off, he was on all fours. _Wha_ — _?_ A sharp, burning sensation racked his ears. He thought he screamed, but his scream came out as silence. Silence and fear. Deidara held his mouth. Something vile rushed up in his throat and he vomited on the ground—resemblances of today’s lunch mingled with red.

It was sound.

The Yotsuki-nin used _sound_.

Deidara knew it, this type of pain. It was worse than the caress of a blade or the strokes of Sasori’s poison. Not a single touch yet his insides felt like imploding. Ill. Feverish. But how? His creation—

“How does it feel to have your weapon used against you?” Arrogance was apparent in the Yotsuki-nin’s voice.

_Ah. That’s how it is._

But what could he do? Wherever there was air, there was the possibility of sound manipulation. Hiding underground? Not going to last. C1? But that was reserved for Itachi.

The swish-swash of wind jutsu became deafening howls. A bombardment of noise that triumphed over a bombardment of explosions.

_Pound. Pound. Pound._

Deidara hobbled away, dragging his stabbed leg along. He didn’t know how long he went—all was fuzzy, soundless, and bloody, but by the time the pain rose to the point of unbearable, he was one step away from falling off the mountain cliff. He looked down over the edge; the unknown called for him. Seduced him. For a moment Deidara wondered how his body would look sprawled on the bottom of that void, punctured through by a scrawny tree top.

But what could he do? Ask for help? He had lost every means of connection with Sasori: the puppet body, and the network of clay spiders which had disintegrated since he fell unconscious. Deidara rolled to a nearby rock and sought shelter behind it, hoping to buy some time.

There, he noticed something.

His only ray of hope left.

Deidara grabbed it. It was a miracle the item wasn’t blown away or blown to pieces during the fight. Then again, Sasori was famous for the resilience of his pieces.

A crumbling sound. Deidara’s wall of defense collapsed into debris. The Yotsuki-nin arrived in front of him, eyes red and head high as though he were God. His fingers were already twisted in a seal, but he stopped half-way when Deidara smiled at him and leaned backward.

_Falling off a cliff felt kinda nice._

* * *

“That’s the stupidest, riskiest, and the most ridiculous plan you’ve ever pulled.”

“And? Did it work?”

“… Yes.”

“Then your argument is invalid,” Deidara passed the other a mischievous glance that was, like all his other advances, hardly reciprocated.

He brushed it off and turned to the side. A large section of the ground was raised and shaped into a block, a tiny house molded with barricades of stony soil. “Alright. I’m going to get him out now. You sure we didn’t fry him?”

“I made sure it was the correct amount of fire,” Sasori replied as he stretched his hand, watching intently as this part of him coordinated with the rest of his long-awaited original puppet husk.

“Not fried then?”

“Not crisp, yes.”

“You’re sick.”

“Thanks.”

It was good hearing Sasori talk again. Hearing the venom trickling off his tongue, finding the wit underneath, reading the way his eyes narrowed and the incredulous twitch of his brows. _See?_ Sasori was never emotionless. He was an ocean of emotions, shrouded under a thousand waves of subtleties.

And Deidara needed to appreciate this Sasori more— Sasori with a heart, for he was over-expressive next to his empty shell.

Keeping the butterflies in check, Deidara ran through hand seals and caused the block’s walls to retreat into the earth. The burnt figure of the Yotsuki-nin came into sight, spared some relief by the crispness of the open air. The man was lying face-down with his clothes seared dark at the edges. No more boastful stares. Deidara was content when he found a pulse.

“Minus the—"

“—gigantic—" Sasori scoffed.

“—risk factor, you have to admit I came up with a brilliant plan,” Deidara said as he got up from his squatting position. “I mean, flying all the way here, burning him, then trapping him in that block? Genius.”

“I’d appreciate it a lot more if you didn’t use my body as a vehicle, and my fire jet as your weapon.” Sasori frowned at the disassembled chakra shield mechanic on his arm.

“He can manipulate air, danna. To make winds and to mess with sounds,” Deidara replied, a sour taste in his mouth. “The only way to defeat him is to take away his supply. Suck out the air by making a fire in a closed space, yeah.”

“You wouldn’t have got into that situation in the first place if you’d listened to me. But you _had to_ split up.”

Pain clamoured across Deidara’s ears, as though reminding him of its prideful existence, and he succumbed to it, slumping onto the ground after a few flailing movements of his limbs. He held his head. The residue of the previous battle wasn’t the culprit. The remnants of the sound kinjutsu turned background to the wrath of ART herself. She was the one who SCREAMED. Her claws cleaved through his ears, breathing grievance.

Deidara had tried to put up a brave front, but there was no denying that he _failed._ _Failed. Failed. Failed._ A miserable victory of a failure as an artist. To think that he had to resort to using Earth jutsu and borrow Sasori’s fire of all things…

There was a squelching sound. Deidara looked up— Sasori had dropped a ball of clay on the ground in front of him.

“I’m a little tired, that’s all,” Deidara stared at the clay like it was some kind of God’s gift. “… How did you know I ran out?”

“You’re giving yourself a major disadvantage when you rely on a limited amount of resources.” A dreadful pause. “Kanyu told me to bring some in case you run out.” Sasori turned towards his battlefield, and his red hair glowed more when the earliest hints of dawn struck. “Go blow up dead bodies or something. I have unfinished business inside.”

Deidara collected the clay and held it up against the rising sun. “Understood.”

“How were you sure I would help you, anyway?”

“I know your body can reassemble and, you know, in the heat of the moment, I just thought it’d work.”

“But—"

“You know what your body parts are doing, yeah? You know everything as long as there’s a part of your chakra there.”

“But I controlled my strings,” Sasori said firmly. “How were you sure I wouldn’t refuse to pull you back here and not let you fall off that cliff?”

“Oh, that?” Deidara smiled. “That’s called trust.”

* * *

After roaming around the area in a search for traces of life left, plopping clay spiders into mouths whose ajar lips still managed to slip a breath out, Deidara thought of checking up on his partner; Sasori had taken _ages_. The sun faltered behind Deidara’s back as he meandered towards Sasori’s location. He pulled on his torn cloak, seeking some warmth.

Deidara kicked away some rubble collected on the doorstep as he entered the mansion. Inside was a feast for all senses. The smell of death enticed the mind—Sasori always left a distinct fragrance—and the building’s roof was punctured with fat, chunky iron sand spikes. Debris and household items and bodies littered the floor. _Looks like someone did not hold back._

As absurd as it sounded, Deidara was not used to the sight of mass slaughter. Soaring in the air from one mile above, even carnage looked pure. Distance yourself enough, and a massacre was merely your village’s playground on a sweltering day, of fallen orchids, of shades of fiery crimson, nature’s minutiae fallen at the mercy of the summer winds. A chessboard of broken pieces. But he was now walking among those pieces, some of whose stares followed him into the depth of the hallway, whose silent spite melted off his shoulders.

Sasori’s victims were never truly dead.

“Shut up.” Deidara placed his palm on the chest of a man with an iron sand spear through his stomach, silencing him.

A scream made Deidara’s heart jump. Never had he encountered a sound so poignant and rich in anguish. Curiosity propelled him to locate the source, and as soon as he succeeded, he regretted having bothered at all.

Deidara stepped into the scene: a normal bedroom on the second floor. Sasori stood in the center of the room, in the process of murdering three people—nothing fascinating, but something told Deidara he should not be here.

The trio facing Sasori were shaking against a wall. A man, a woman, and a little girl trapped within their embrace. From the look of it, the man and the woman weren’t going to last long. Poisoned senbon had adorned their skin, poked holes into their faces. Blood oozed from their pale lips, each splashing against the floor drawing life from their feeble forms.

Yet their grips conveyed such defiance unseen in any of Sasori’s prey. Deidara started to understand the abnormality in what should have been a normal case. Their grips were stubborn. They clenched their arms in front of the girl’s chest, clinging for dear life, shielding her from Sasori. Deidara watched the corners of their lips rise and fall, their breaths quicken then diminish, but their grips did not waver. Not for a second.

“You love wasting time for someone who doesn’t have much of it left,” Sasori said. There was a noticeable strain in his voice.

“Go away! Don’t touch her!” the woman cried.

“She’s going to die anyway.”

Deidara gasped when the man plucked a senbon from his arm and threw it at Sasori, who caught it without blinking. This man had impressive willpower.

“You failed to save yourselves.” It was the first time Sasori talked so _loud_. “You failed to _live_. You failed your greatest responsibility as parents.

“And now you’re trying to protect her?”

The woman opened her mouth, but she choked on her spit. An agonizing expression twisted her face and she collapsed forward, the warmth of her arms leaving her daughter’s sides. The man took no time to follow after. It was like watching puzzle pieces falling into their rightful places—satisfying.

Deidara looked at Sasori.

Sasori’s head was down, fingers twirling the senbon he had previously caught. Then, he looked up and aimed the weapon at the girl trembling between her fallen family. His arm shook. He drove the senbon forward, the poison-tipped needle almost slipping out of his palm, and pulled it back again.

“Danna?” Deidara asked. “Why are you hesitating?”

Sasori turned around, and the mask he had been wearing since Deidara’s recruitment slipped. No clenching fists, red-rimmed eyes, or grinding jaw, but what clouded his face was evident anger. There was no doubt. Deidara’s feet were grounded in his spot.

“I’m not,” Sasori replied, fixing his hair. He turned on his heels to walk away.

“Leader said we need to wipe out this clan,” Deidara said. “Wipe out. We can’t leave anyone alive.”

“Who says we’re going to let her live?” Sasori glanced sideways at Deidara. “Exploding her with your _‘art,’_ slicing her throat open, I don’t care. That brat is not worth my time.”

He left.

Deidara refused to process what just happened; everything was confusing. Nevertheless, it was a bad move for Sasori to leave the dirty work to him: killing a child. Deidara was no stranger to killing, but the idea of ending a child’s life this close was eerie, especially when said child could one day bloom into an amazing artist.

Or maybe he could—

No, no, he couldn’t.

Deidara sighed and stepped closer to the girl. He put his face in her sight by kneeling in front of her.

The girl looked no older than eight. At her age, Deidara was already a chunin. He eyed her over; no serious injuries aside from a few bruises. Her hair clung onto her cheeks by a nasty combination of blood, sweat, tears, and snot. Her face was white with terror. She recoiled from him, pressing herself further against the wall.

“What’s your name?” Deidara asked.

A hint of surprise passed over her expression before giving way to despair.

“I’m asking you. What’s your name?”

“Ki—Kiyoi,” The girl whimpered.

“Kiyoi, yeah?” Deidara said, musing over the word in his head. “I have something that might suit you.”

He took off his cloak and rummaged through his pants’ pockets. All of the flowers were crushed except for one, which he offered Kiyoi with a smile. She received it with much hesitation, little fingers wrapped around the slightly crippled stem holding the flower head in place.

“How about I give you a chance to live?” Deidara hummed. “Would that make you look a little livelier, yeah?”

No reply.

Deidara gave her a disapproving look. “There’s this game where you pluck flower petals to see if your feelings are reciprocated… er, to see if a boy likes you back or not. ‘He loves me. He loves me not.’ I guess you’re at the age to start wondering about those sorts of things. Anyway, have you heard of it?”

Kiyoi nodded. She gazed at Deidara, then the white flower, then her dying parents, and swallowed her tears.

“Shinobi life, you know, it’s not always about the strong and the weak. At the end of the day, it all comes down to luck—luck to have clan’s blood flowing in your veins, powerful eyes, a kekkei genkai,” he trailed off. “If today luck’s in your favor, I’ll let you live.”

Realization dawned on her.

“Close your eyes,” Deidara said in a low voice. “You can’t see the number of petals left. It’ll ruin the surprise.”

The place plunged into silence. Only the screech of winds through the broken windows and the merciless chimes of the grandfather clock flowed in rhythm with Kiyoi’s breaths, counting down her ultimate end.

“He kills me.”

When Deidara turned around, he was no longer in the Yotsuki’s mansion. He was drowning amid the tireless waves of white and basking in that sickeningly sweet flowery scent.

“He kills me not.” 

On the flower field in the Valley of Lies, there were Deidara and his eight-year-old victim. She was a perfect replica of the dying corpse knotted in her bloodless palms. Because each white flower was a girl in her most beautiful years! Her skin was so glassy it let sunlight shine through, her cheeks tinted with a dainty blush. Her body fluttered with the youthful energy of a girl about to blossom—but then she fluttered no more.

…

“He kills me.”

Kiyoi was no different than her parents—Deidara should have expected. The flower slipped out of her hands the moment her fingers brushed against its stamen, finding no smoothness of petals against her skin.

She used her last moments to squirm, attempting a pitiful struggle against death’s grip. She made Deidara’s ears _buzz._

The buzz brought only a tingling sensation, laughable compared to the Yotsuki man’s ones, but Deidara was shocked. “You… can use sound too?”

Something tugged at the hem of his shirt. He tensed up when he saw it—the ashy index finger of the mother hooked into the fabric of his clothes. She was not dead, not until she had experienced enough torment to expire in three days’ time, but Deidara was aware of how much strength it took to even flinch under the influence of Sasori’s poison. The rest of her body did not move, and he couldn’t see her face...

And somehow, that tug of her finger said everything.

White clay slithered its way around Kiyoi and her parents. Their necks would snap, their cells would burst into art, art would welcome them, and their pain would end immediately.

“Don’t worry,” Deidara gulped. “It’ll be quick.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: "Kiyoi" means pure in Japanese. It's actually the name of an existing character in Shippuden, but I decided to take it since I thought it would be fitting. 
> 
> With chapter four complete, we have finally reached the climax of the first arc and the beginning of the process of traumatizing our beloved Deidara. I hope you're as excited as I am about what to come!


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